Nuclear power plants ‘could become more open to cyber attacks’ as police consider cloud storage

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), the armed police force tasked with guarding all of Britain’s nuclear plants, has previously refused to use the new storage technology given much of its information is classified as “sensitive”.

However the force has revealed it could start using cloud technology as early as April next year despite a series of high profile information breaches which raised questions about the software’s reliability.

Technology experts warned the move could be “unnecessary” and leave the force more exposed to foreign hackers.

Stealthy spy software snooping for years: Symantec

The malicious software, dubbed Regin, has a rare level of sophistication and has been targeting government agencies, telecoms, utilities, airlines, research facilities, private individuals and others since at least 2008, according to Symantec Corporation.

Attacks on telecom firms appeared aimed at getting access to calls being routed through networks.

“Regin is a highly complex threat which has been used in systematic data collection or intelligence gathering campaigns,” the Silicon Valley-based computer security firm said in a paper detailing the threat.